Fantasy Figurines Capture Millions on Kickstarter

Reaper Miniature's Bones line offers high level of detail for hours of role playing fun. Images: Courtesy Reaper, Inc.

This weekend, Kickstarter added a ninth million-dollar project to its most funded list. What makes this one interesting is that it isn’t an iPhone accessory, gadget, or celebrity rock project. It’s an assortment of over 200 fantasy figurines called Bones that can be used to play Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games.

Even if you don’t play games with little plastic monsters, the Bones campaign warrants notice: It is now the third highest-grossing Kickstarter in history. Reaper Miniatures, the company behind Bones, has shown that you don’t need a high-tech product to make millions on Kickstarter, just a high-intensity fan base and a killer strategy.

Unlike many of the fledging startups on Kickstarter, Reaper started in 1992, and over the past two decades has produced hundreds of products scattered over a couple dozen brands. They found a winner with the Bones line, which launched in March and quickly became their best seller with 20 low-cost figures.

Bones’ success didn’t guarantee its growth, though, as new model designs are expensive to produce. Reaper founder Ed Pugh explains, “Figure molds for the current pieces already in production have ranged from $8,000 to $32,000 each. A dragon mold might begin at $25,000 but could easily rise to $75,000 depending on the decisions you make.”

With such prohibitive design costs, Pugh and his team decided to test Bones’ success by using Kickstarter to generate the working capital for large batch of new models.

The Reaper team planned a campaign worthy of the finest Dungeon Master, complete with mounds of treasure. They set their official Kickstarter funding goal at $30,000 — low enough to get molds made and get ranked highly in the system, which helps generate further attention. Unofficially, however, they aimed for loftier targets, desiring to earn at least $1 million and take the top spot on Kickstarter’s gaming list. But careful planning forecasted something even higher. “It was designed with hopes of raising $4 million.” Pugh explains, a number they came very close to matching by the time funding ended.

Part of what made Bones incredibly effective was the way Reaper leveraged the concept of “Stretch Goals” — new rewards that are unlocked at certain funding thresholds. If you pledged at the “Vampire” level of $100, new figures would be added to your reward as the tally grew, encouraging backers to share the deal with friends.

Even with serious planning and 20 years of experience developing products for this audience, the team at Reaper faced unexpected results. Pugh says he was surprised by “how fast it could accelerate in the last week” — when the project raised an additional $1.8 million in the final 72 hours. “We had a meeting on the Monday of the last week and we realized that after that meeting there were really no more adjustments we could make that would matter. The event was accelerating so fast it was simply going to become a rocket-ride and it was anyone’s guess where we would land.”

Top 10 Highest-Funded Kickstarter Projects

As of Aug. 26, 2012

Project

Funding

Category

Pebble: E-Paper Watch for iPhone and Android

$10,266,846

Design

OUYA: A New Kind of Video Game Console

$8,596,475

Games

Reaper Miniatures Bones: An Evolution Of Gaming Miniatures

$3,429,236

Games

Double Fine Adventure

$3,336,372

Games

Wasteland 2

$2,933,252

Games

Shadowrun Returns

$1,836,447

Games

Elevation Dock: The Best Dock For iPhone

$1,464,707

Design

The Order of the Stick Reprint Drive

$1,254,120

Comics

Amanda Palmer: The new RECORD, ART BOOK, and TOUR

$1,192,793

Music

Sedition Wars: Battle for Alabaster

$951,254

Games

Despite outsized success, Pugh has a measured response to the campaign. “This Kickstarter validated our belief in Bones and they will obviously become a large part of our future product releases. Beyond that we really are more of an evolutionary company than a revolutionary company so everything will pretty much continue as business as usual.”

While the achievement is great for Reaper, some worry about the Kickstarter impact on neighborhood game shops, including Dan Yarrington, founder of game publisher Game Salute and owner of two game stores. “There’s already significant question about how this will impact the retail tier,” Yarrington expresses. “Kickstarter continues to transform the industry and this is only the beginning. Every time we think we’ve hit a new threshold, it gets pushed higher.” For his part, Yarrington regularly release games through Kickstarter with his “Springboard” imprint.

Others see Kickstarter success as a net positive. Chern Ann Ng is a founder of publisher Cool Mini or Not and has raised approximately $2 million on three miniature game projects, including the Kickstarter top 10 hit Sedition Wars, and new effort Relic Knights. “It’s good that this is taking place in as public a venue as Kickstarter; this should help distributors and retail stores recognize potential hits they may have missed, especially in a pretty tough economic environment.”

The first tabletop wargame using miniatures was invented by sci-fi luminary H.G. Wells, but the concept really took off in the 1970s when RPGs were at their peak and helped companies like Games Workshop go public. Now Kickstarter is redefining the industry again, showing how big changes can come in small packages.

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